Negatory
2yr ago
I just think you’re getting the weights of the variables in play very wrong.
I agree that paper is dumb. 2012 is super late in the game here so it’s not very relevant anyway. I also agree the APA is often full of shit. I agree academia and medicine has a severe left wing bias. This has been true for several decades now.
But I’m not really seeing the evidence this was very load bearing for the public at large in supporting gay marriage when bigger factors exist.
Note that you haven’t addressed the cases I’ve cited (as have others I think) where we know people who had every reason to not be gay and yet they still are despite the risk/cost it was.
Negatory
2yr ago
Life is full of murky areas where we make arbitrary cutoffs.
We have to make such decisions over what “consent” even means in any given context. “One drink” is a standard some places for lacking the ability to consent, for example.
I’m not trying to defend the specific one here as it is, or attack it, I’m pointing out something like an age cutoff is basically inevitable and that “consent” is both complicated and insufficient as a principle.
Age of responsibility/adulthood issues are their own mess before you even bring in the separate mess of consent.
Negatory
2yr ago
Oh good. Even winning doesn’t matter.
Like I’m familiar with the points you’ve made and I’m a veteran of the Deep State, so I very much understand the bureaucratic dynamic, but also winning is still a lot better than losing if one cares about the GOP agenda.
Negatory
2yr ago
No.
That’s not a remotely accurate let alone charitable account of why Bush and co invaded Iraq.
The truth is bad enough without having exaggerate it.
Even if, even if, I take your portrayal here as accurate, the death of a million foreigners to get rid of a terrible autocrat is not nearly so bad in my view as the risk of derailing America’s system of government because that could get a lot worse than what happened in Iraq.
Negatory
2yr ago
Isn’t the reason you used the term the fact that was what Tomato was referring to, specifically the Right’s reaction to losing the election?
BLM can dislike both the police and Trump but they only rioted after a police shooting that had nothing to do with the Feds or Trump.
You’re just doing lazy “boo group” analysis and now trying to backtrack on how it is somehow actually relevant as a response to Tomato’s point. The left is bad enough without you having to be imprecise about it.
Negatory
2yr ago
Going to the doctor because you broke your leg is orthogonal to the internal locus of control issue of blaming someone else for your problems or solely relying on others.
You don’t understand what the advocates are advocating and I assure you it is not the idea that one should never seek external assistance.
Internal locus of control != absolute self-reliance.
Negatory
2yr ago
That is my point yes.
We have drawn arbitrary lines around “adult” and “kid” and there’s no way around the fact that children develop their abilities gradually and not at the exact same rate.
The potential side effects of sex and potential for manipulation/abuse/exploitation of younger people explain the rules we have and why we have them; not some absolute concept of “consent.” Obviously, plenty of young people who are adults still have such things happen to them, but so it goes with adulthood and drawing lines somewhere.
Teenage marriage to an adult is of course legal in most places with appropriate permissions.
Negatory
2yr ago
I’m highlighting that tension between “able to consent” and “but not if an adult is involved” and the giant gray ball of arbitrary murkiness there.
There aren’t clean cut lines here in nature, but we have to have them in the law if we are going to have them.
Negatory
2yr ago
I’m saying the people I know who were gay before the tide shifted include zero examples of that phenomenon.
I’m well aware of “bisexual” being a questionable label a lot of people have adopted without it being obvious it means anything, but that phenomenon only became apparent to me, in my own life, well after the tide shifted 10+ years ago.
I can’t demonstrate any of that to you via a study, obviously.
For someone who is very concerned about dishonest science, it strikes me as strange I’m not seeing where you cite bad studies. You criticize a NYT opinion piece, but I’m not seeing any science going on here.
I’m totally willing to believe some segment of the population can be socially influenced in their sexual preferences, but it’s definitely not everyone. I, for one, am attracted to the opposite sex even though that’s deeply fucking inconvenient. If I could flip a switch I would (well, ten years ago anyway).
In my personal experience growing up in a conservative religious environment, being gay was really not fun then and still isn’t fun now. It’s not a lifestyle preference to be taken lightly.
You seem to be conflating more recent strangeness over sexual identity and especially gender labels and then retconning back to when having those identities really truly wasn’t fun.
Negatory
2yr ago
Of course they're capable of deciding to have a little fun with some friction on the bits.
Just not with adults.
Kid on kid is fine, obviously.
Negatory
2yr ago
Well the individual in question was old enough to have had been invested in some stock during both. He was just in a conservative portfolio in his mid-50s (so he lost out on a ton of growth over 30 years). When I talked to my dad (same rough age) about investing he definitely knew the lesson of not pulling out in a downturn.
But overall I think you’re right about most people. I had also got my first adult job just before the 2008 crash and I was in a position where I had put a hell of a lot of my pay into my investment fund. (I was in the military so I didn’t have a lot of extra expenses for a few years.) It sucked watching the numbers go down but it wasn’t like pulling out a few grand ~40 years before I hit retirement was going to make sense. And I had read enough about buying and holding to not be tempted.
Negatory
2yr ago
You think Russia needed to use Bush as an example/excuse to invade a neighboring country and to blow off international law.
Come on man please. Bush can be bad/wrong for the invasion without trying to blame him for Putin acting like an average Russian autocrat over the last few centuries.
NK did not decide to nuclearize merely because they got put on a rhetorical naughty list.
Ironically, threatening Iran put them off their nuclear weapons program.
I don’t like Bush. I came of political age during Bush and was polarized because of the blatant incompetence and inability of the Red Tribe to admit they fucked up on Iraq, in particular.
But also it’s very important to criticize bad people/things accurately and not simply add unjustified blame.
Negatory
2yr ago
Nobody not in the West cares either.
The Muslim world loves Chinese money way more than opposing the oppression of Muslims there.
Negatory
2yr ago
I think some of us are confused by you using “antagonistic” to refer to the loaded language of “boo outgroup” from the “sore losers” and not the response itself being antagonistic against the OP himself.
(Also, a lot of us probably comment in a way we don’t necessarily see mod action trying to reset a tone shift before we pile on.)
Negatory
2yr ago
If Trump is unfit for office wouldn’t that be a constitutional way of approaching it?
Leaving aside whether it’s justified or proper or anything like that for congressional Dems to do that, it’s plainly not an insurrection unless lefties also try to occupy a building via force.
Also conservatives have a structural advantage in the senate and electoral college because our system is biased against population density, but if you want to believe GOP voters should think voting is pointless then I guess that’s one hell of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If elections are so rigged against the GOP why does it control so many states and remain competitive in national elections?
Negatory
2yr ago
It’s remarkable you think it’s “pedantic” to point out you aren’t responding with apples to apples in your comparison based on chronology alone, even without the whole issue that the 2020 riots did not have anything explicit to do with Trump, since it’s not the federal government that controls the police.
You can still believe the Blue tribe is bad. I’m not trying to convince you it’s not. I don’t like them either and I certainly think the 2020 riots were atrocious and excused by many progressives, along with the “defund the police” insanity.
But do try to criticize your outgroup accurately when you do it. The Motte is best when we can at least be consistent and precise even when we’re not charitable.
Negatory
2yr ago
The “constant cultural threat” only came about once critical mass was achieved.
Consider what year it was that Obama came out in favor of gay marriage. Prop 8 in communist California was in 2008.
People are in fact born kleptomaniacs so I’m not sure what you think you’re doing here. Stealing things is bad, so that’s a problem regardless.
Mostly though, you’re not properly considering how much of the shift was old people dying.
I’m also amused by you seeming to claim you’ve witnessed fake gays or something, because all the gays I know remain very much that way.
At any rate, those surveys support my position but that won’t be convincing to you if you believe we were all lied to and that supersedes personal experience. Do you think Dick Cheney changed his mind because of science lies and social pressure?
It’s also worth considering how much changes to trad marriage shifted and affected people’s view on the concept.
https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/13/opinion/coontz-same-sex-marriage/index.html
Negatory
2yr ago
Consider that you’re choosing how to define “worse” in a way that others may not share.
For example:
My litmus test for anyone right of center is asking them if Trump violated his oath of office and is demonstrably unfit to be president.
Anyone who says no is not really worth taking seriously as someone with principles.
Bush was worse by some measures than Trump, but I didn’t question his basic sanity or have to wonder if he was going to purposefully erode our constitutional norms.
Negatory
2yr ago
Conspiracies differ in significant ways from trade secrets.
The fact that controversial and/or illegal activity is involved changes motivations and incentives for someone to defect, for example.
Negatory
2yr ago
What Republicans are we talking about here and how much is the Biden administration responsible for the decision to prosecute?
Negatory
2yr ago
The point I’m getting at is “normalization” might happen the “gross victimless crime” way until it reaches some critical mass.
Our present standards for legal consent are not etched in stone, and we do know societal moral norms can shift pretty rapidly.
Negatory
2yr ago
The difference you’re failing to understand is that “I need to overcome this challenge without help” can be utterly self-defeating if, in fact, assistance is needed to make progress.
No one I’m aware of is advocating “go it alone.”
If you think the advocates of radical self-responsibility and an internal locus of control are preaching an avoidance of seeking external help when sensible, then I think you’re misunderstanding the message.
The point is to avoid blaming external things and to take maximum control of one’s life, not to only use one’s own capacities ever.
Negatory
2yr ago
It’s not just warships.
The Jones Act hurt all US shipbuilding.
I’m not saying Dems on average are excited about military spending. But it’s not that Ukraine support has anything to do with that.
Negatory
2yr ago
You’re assuming a lot there with “don’t actually want to” that will not go well for you here if taken to a logical conclusion.
Leaving aside debates over informed consent and consent as a measure of moral, realistic sex robots of illegal categories are probably going to be a real problem for culture and law to deal with.
In other words, normalization can and will happen for some version of these things without being wrong per se according to the moral framework you draw here.
There was recently internet drama over a prominent YouTuber for both beastiality and pedophilia on his computer and he embraced the former as something he was open about.
Please read the following and acknowledge the chronology and the fact NK had a weapons program before it left the NPT:
https://www.cfr.org/timeline/north-korean-nuclear-negotiations
Russia is the primary problem with US-Russian relations, which is why it gets so pissy when anyone interferes with their ability to dominate/invade their neighbors. I don’t know that the Bush admin did the best job on Russian policy, but trying to blame Bush for the path Putin has taken—given how many times the US tried to make friends with him—strikes me as highly unjustified.
The Iranians have been killing US servicemembers for 40 years. Our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan gave them an opportunity to do it close to home. Ironically, we did them a huge favor by eliminating Saddam and it’s not like they like the Taliban either.
More options
Context Copy link